SIMON Father, why do you cover your face with your
hands? Why do you fetch your breath so hard?
See, villains, his heart is burst! O villains,
he cannot speak. One of you run for some water:
quickly, ye knaves; will ye have your throats cut?
(They both slink off.) How is it with you, Sir
Walter? Look up, Sir, the villains are gone.
He hears me not, and this deep disgrace of treachery
in his son hath touched him even to the death.
O most distuned, and distempered world, where sons
talk their aged fathers into their graves! Garrulous
and diseased world, and still empty, rotten and hollow
talking world, where good men decay, states
turn round in an endless mutability, and still for
the worse, nothing is at a stay, nothing abides but
vanity, chaotic vanity.—­Brother, adieu!

There lies the parent stock
which gave us life,
Which I will see consign’d
with tears to earth.
Leave thou the solemn funeral
rites to me,
Grief and a true remorse abide
with thee.

(Bears in the body.)

SCENE.—­Another Part of the Forest.

MARGARET (alone)
It was an error merely, and
no crime,
An unsuspecting openness in
youth,
That from his lips the fatal
secret drew,
Which should have slept like
one of nature’s mysteries,
Unveil’d by any man.
Well, he is dead!
And what should Margaret do
in the forest?
O ill-starr’d John!
O Woodvil, man enfeoffed to
despair!
Take thy farewell of peace.
O never look again to see
good days,
Or close thy lids in comfortable
nights,
Or ever think a happy thought
again,
If what I have heard be true.—­
Forsaken of the world must
Woodvil live,
If he did tell these men.
No tongue must speak to him,
no tongue of man
Salute him, when he wakes
up in a morning;
Or bid “good-night”
to John. Who seeks to live
In amity with thee, must for
thy sake
Abide the world’s reproach.
What then?
Shall Margaret join the clamours
of the world
Against her friend? O
undiscerning world,
That cannot from misfortune
separate guilt,
No, not in thought! O
never, never, John.
Prepar’d to share the
fortunes of her friendFor better or for worse
thy Margaret comes,
To pour into thy wounds a
healing love,
And wake the memory of an
ancient friendship.
And pardon me, thou spirit
of Sir Walter,
Who, in compassion to the
wretched living,
Have but few tears to waste
upon the dead.